Idolatry

Gaza is What Happens When You Treat a State Like a god

This Tuesday, Knopf will publish my new book, Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza.

You’ll find a list of book-related events, interviews and reviews below.

I’ll be talking about the book in this week’s zoom call, on Friday, January 31, at 1 PM. My conversation partner will be the Palestinian-American historian Rashid Khalidi. We’ll discuss what the struggle for Palestinian liberation requires of Jews, a question at the heart of my book.

As I’ve mentioned before, I hope people who buy my book also buy one by a Palestinian author (for instance, Rashid’s groundbreaking Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness) and donate to a charity working in Gaza.

Friday’s zoom call is for paid subscribers.

Ask Me Anything

Our next “Ask Me Anything,” for premium subscribers, will be today (Monday, January 27) at 1 PM Eastern. I’ll answer questions about the ceasefire, the Trump administration, Elon Musk, and anything else on your mind. We’ll do another “Ask Me Anything,” in February, about my new book.

Book Tour

(We’ll update this every week.)

On Wednesday, January 29, I’ll be speaking with MSNBC’s Ayman Mohyeldin at the New York Society for Ethical Culture. The event is being sponsored by Jewish Currents and the registration link is here. Paid subscribers can view a code at the very bottom of this page (after video transcript) to receive a free ticket or a discounted price on the ticket plus the book.

On Tuesday, February 4, I’ll be speaking at the Newmark School of Journalism at CUNY with my brilliant colleague, Alia Malek.

On Wednesday, February 5, I’ll be speaking online to “Reconstructionists Expanding Our Conversation on Israel/Palestine.”

On Saturday night, February 8, I’ll be speaking with Ta-Nehisi Coates at the First Presbyterian Church of Brooklyn. This event is being sponsored by Jewish Currents and the registration link is here. Paid subscribers can view a code at the very bottom of this page (after video transcript) to receive a free ticket.

On Monday, February 17, I’ll be speaking at San Diego State University.

On Tuesday, February 18, I’ll be speaking with UCLA historian David Myers at the Lumiere Music Hall in Los Angeles.

On Monday, February 24, I’ll be speaking with Washington Post columnist Karen Attiah at Politics and Prose bookstore in Washington, DC.

On Monday, March 3, I’ll be speaking with Professor Atalia Omer at Notre Dame University.

On Tuesday, March 18, I’ll be debating an old classmate, Michael Rubin of the American Enterprise Institute, on the proposition “The oppression of Palestinians in non-democratic Israel has been systematic and profound” at the Soho Forum in New York.

On Monday, March 24, I’ll be speaking at the University of Vermont.

On Wednesday, April 9, I’ll be speaking at United Parish in Brookline, Massachusetts.

Book Interviews

Last week, I spoke about Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza with MSNBC’s Ali Velshi, Errol Louis of NY1, Guardian columnist and podcaster Owen Jones, Daily Beast columnist Wajahat Ali, and twice (!) on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

Kirkus calls Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza “learned” and “powerful.”

Things to Read

(Maybe this should be obvious, but I link to articles and videos I find provocative and significant, not necessarily ones I entirely agree with.)

In Jewish Currents (subscribe!), Mari Cohen asks “Can Genocide Studies Survive a Genocide in Gaza?”

For the Foundation for Middle East Peace’s “Occupied Thoughts” Podcast, I interviewed Katherine Franke, who recently left her position as a professor at Columbia law school, about the climate for Palestinian rights activists there.

I also did an interview with MSNBC’s Ayman Mohyeldin about Joe Biden’s foreign policy legacy. Here are some snippets.

Donald Trump’s nominee for Ambassador to the United Nations, Elise Stefanik, says the Bible entitles Israel to control the West Bank.

My friend, the brilliant professor of Jewish thought, Rabbi Shaul Magid, has launched a newsletter on Substack.

See you on Monday, January 27 and Friday, January 31,

Peter

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VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:

One of the things that you hear most frequently from Israel’s defenders is that it has a right to exist. And I think this phrase is really important to think about.

One of my heroes is the Orthodox Jewish Israeli philosopher, Yeshayahu Leibowitz. And Leibowitz was very explicit about this. Leibowitz said Israel has no right to exist because no state has a right to exist. States are instruments. States are instruments to protect human life and to allow for human flourishing. Leibowitz came at this from a theological perspective as an Orthodox Jew. It was very clear to him that the only thing that was created in the image of God were human beings.

This is the point that Abraham Joshua Heschel made very clearly as well. When speaking about idolatry, Heschel made the point that to see anything as created in the image of God, other than the human being—whether it’s a building or a statue or a tree or a star, any of that—is idolatrous. Because the only thing, according to Torah, that is created in the image of God is the human being.

And so, what Leibowitz was saying was when you see an inherent value in states beyond their instrumental value, you are imagining that they have a value in and above the value of the human beings who reside within those states. And that is idolatry because it makes them sacred, and it places their value above the lives of the human beings who live within that state. And it is the human beings, not the state, that is created in the image of God.

And that’s why I think that much of the establishment Jewish discourse about Israel has become, in Leibowitz’s terms, idolatrous. Because this phrase, ‘right to exist,’ is again and again used as a way of trumping the value of the people who live within this territory, and saying: no, no, I’m not going to take moral responsibility for what is being done to those people who live under the control of the state of Israel—half of whom are Palestinian—because the rights of the state trump the rights of those individuals. And that is to make the state an idol.

And that is what Leibowitz saw as a grave, grave sin. It is important to remember that idolatry is just about the most serious sin there is in Judaism. It’s one of only three that you cannot perform, even at risk of death. The Talmud says that opposing idolatry is the very definition of being a Jew. And that’s why I think it’s so important to understand the idolatry that has crept into Jewish discussion of Israel and to oppose that idolatry.

Free Ticket/Discount Code

Beinart Notebook paid subscribers will see a code below for a free ticket, or a discounted price on the ticket plus the book, for the January 29 event with MSNBC’s Ayman Mohyeldin, and/or a free ticket for the February 8 event with Ta-Nehisi Coates: